Does the Jezebel Mourn Her Makeup in the Sink?
by FroginaHolyWaterFont
Summary: Lex brings an initially uncouth guest to the Mall, but she proves to be bigger than her title. (Review, maybe?)
1. Default Chapter

Author's Notes: Alright, I'm going to try this fanfiction thing again. I would just like to start off by setting for all the readers the state of Tribeworld in the story. We don't have Tribe 5 in the U.S. yet, and reading the synopses doesn't much help my imagination navigate the entire Mega/Techno/Liberty plot line to its own designs, therefore to simplify things and to get the story out how I want it, we'll say that Mega was defeated, Lottie, Slade, Ram, and Gel are still in Liberty and will make no appearences, while the rest of the Mallrats (sans Ebony) are back at Phoenix. 

  


All Tribe 5 relationships still stand, don't feel like changing them.

  


Disclaimer: All characters aside from Lyta and Jen are copywrite Cloud 9. The character of Jen is taken from the casino owner in season three, who's name I forgot, and thus renamed. No infringement intended.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Celluloid Pornography

_It was a Roman Jesus_

_That cut in for a dance_

_And when her shoes were broken_

_She wept upon his lance_

_It was a Roman Jesus_

_That loved him down the grain_

_And in heaven he calls her_

_Perfect among the foreordained_...

  


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"So, I'm lying in bed, completely satisfied and oh so proud of meself for what I felt was a damn good performance, and I roll over, expected her to swoon like a lover and give me twenty kisses, you know? But no. Her back towards me, a long, exasperatated (spoken incorrectly) sigh, and she gets up and... _leaves_. Leaves me lying, buck-naked, alone! Like it was just that bad."

  


The bartender poured Lex another shot, tuning skillfully out of his pulp-smashed talk, yet impressing enough of an interested eye to keep any drunkard confident in his importance. 

  


"It's just... wacko, you see?" Lex went on after downing the whiskey and folding his face from the sting. "She like... does this whole innocent thing, and I waited so damn long... and then she just slicks me off like another handbag... slippery little Gel...thing!" 

  


Lex let out a burp and let his palm thud on the Casino bartop. He hadn't drunk so much in ages, but he felt so pressed, so flattened between the pages of his own story that he could devise no other cure for his aching displacement of the air. He had let, like so many of a child's wooden blocks, his pain build upon itself, splintering his skin and rotting away his organs. He buried his paternity with Zandra, his heart fled with Tai-San, his conscience lay in the dirt under the constant pressure of Siva's cadaver, and now such a little woman as Gel has lacerated his pride. He drank, yes, how he drank!

  


He threw his head back, like a bird swallowing a fish as the liquor finned and flopped like an acidic tadpole down his throat. His mind felt about as clear as a congested earthworm, and with the same optical capacity. 

  


As he hastily swallowed what felt next, not like a fish, but more like the heron itself, he felt a heavy tumor of wet air, sweet as sweat and tender like tears, clasp to his ear, which took the almost palpable scent and the dripping cloud, molded it into the out-of-tune whisper of a song...

  


"The itsy bitsy Spider

Went up the water spout

Down came the rain and

Washed the spider out

Up came the sun and

Dried up all the rain

So the itsy bitsy Spider

Went up the spout again..."

  


Lex felt poisonous sin cling to his cheek and blacken his neck with desire. His head wobbled with alcohol and titillation as he managed to get out, jokingly defensive, "You're off-key..."

  


"I've never had complaints before," came a voice that strained painfully with sultry tones and purple-velvet charm from behind him. He spun himself around in his stool slowly and looked up at the Galatea that towered before his lucid form.

  


She was heroin-thin, her skin like perfumed water and painted heavily with thick, black designs that curved with every accentuated physicality, reaching down inside their textile cages and smearing back out as if inferno-inflicted. Her cheeks and lids were sunken smoked, and her lips a red darker than blood drying on pavement. The corset seemed to be stitched to her skin, while glorified underwear hitched the gartered boots that gleamed like the glass eyes of a doll to her cylindrical upper thighs, and coated her multi-colour-stockinged legs, impossibly long. Her hair was a plastic cherry-raven colour, and tweaked to a left-him-still-sleeping look. 

  


She was celluloid pornography, seductive perfection bottled in a vase that stunk of booze.

  


"You're beautiful..." Lex stammered, groggily.

  


She pursed her mouth slyly, her thick lips curling like paint peeling off the bedroom wall over her flawless face. 

  


"Never had complaints about that, either..."


	3. Facets of Sand

Lex awoke in his bed, in the center of his room, in the back of the mall.. or was he in his mall, in the center of his bed, in the back of his room? What a hangover...

  


The morning was blaring from his window like a bugle that had shredded its mute. He looked around with what seemed to be all of London in his eyes, at its foggiest: His dresser... his mirror... his hooker... his chair...

  


Rewind.

  


"What the Hell...?"

  


"Oh, you're up." A devil's chocolate smile shellacked itself to the stale girl's face. In the clear light she was not as gorgeous as he barely remembered; the shadows were glued like tooth-edged tape between her ribs and above her collarbone, her hipbones made her acrylic-cream skin cocain white as their summit pushed through, her jet black roots were tangling into the faded raspberry syrup of it's additonal mass. But the sun spied the green of her eyes, and their bright, moist colour speared through the air and through the sheets as she stared back at a befuddled Lex.

  


Lex's raven hair was twisted and plastered to his flustered cheeks and sore neck. His shirt half tucked and the collar creeping off his shoulder. He took a few minutes to gather his head but its jagged edges cut his hands.

  


"Did I bring you home?" He asked, stroking his scalp.

  


The girl walked over to the bed and sat down next to Lex's half-suspended shape. He looked at her through crackling eyes and saw that she must have been about his age, although she looked too tired to be young.

  


"Yeah, you did." Her proximity emitted many scents. Cheap, homemade perfume, over-expired Mabeline, a strange addition of lemon... but underneath these painted fallacies he smelled old, cooked on sex and a metallic, antiseptic remanence on her flesh, taught and dusty with talcum powder. But as he drew back the covers and looked at his buckled belt and half tucked shirt -- snug into his underwear, just as he liked it -- he realized it was only the dozens of other men he smelled in her presence.

  


"You passed out a few hours ago, after blubbering for about three hours... how's your head?"

  


"Hey, I do not blubber...!" But suddenly Lex felt his head sink into his abdomen and was choked off in pain. The girl walked over to her spacious purse and pulled out a small flask of tinted liquid. She brought it back to his bed and uncorked it.

  


"Smells just lovely." His face began to wither with the odor.

  


"And tastes like the tongue-scraping of a pregnant cow." 

  


"That's disgusting..."

  


"Oh well, you know, I'm very bad at jokes."

  


Lex twitched a laugh, and slipped the liquid down his tongue with a wince... it could have been worse.

  


As his head began to clear he looked around the room, at his clothed body, and then at her. "You didn't..."

  


Her eyes Ferris wheeled exasperatedly. "I'm a prostitute, not a thief," and under her breath, "Or is their a difference, he thinks."

  


Lex relaxed then. His hangover was dissipating quickly. "So what's your name?"

  


"Lyta," she responded.

  


"What about your real name?"

  


She held up her arms as if presenting something less than extraordinary but impossible to bereft. "I was born with a hooker name, m'dear." She smiled again, coolly, sharply..

  


Lex nodded as if in approval. "So, you freelance or what? Traveling? Never seen you at the Casino before."

  


Lyta pulled her legs onto the bed and pretzeled them tightly. "I woke for Jen. I'm one of the more... expensive ones." She eyed him with a one cocked 'brow, emphasizing this last fact to the disregard of Lex, who nodded again, knowingly. 

  


"Yeah, I've taken a few pay-offs in the past from Jen, to keep his networks above the law."

  


Lyta snorted a laugh. "So you're the infamous Sheriff Lex, eh?" Lex straitened against the banister proudly. "Well, you have a very cute snore, Sheriff." Lex's smile recoiled crossly.

  


"I hope it didn't wake you then," he said venomously.

  


"I never sleep," she retorted. She then arose from the bed with the flask. "You did seem to have a lot on your chest, tho. Surprised your badge didn't pop off long ago." She spoke above the rustle of her bag.

  


Lex looked at her suspiciously. He began to feel a slight panic arouse his senses... a panic and her bent-stretched behind as she crouched on the floor. "How much did I spill last night? I don't remember a thing."

  


"Quite a lot. You're first wife went boom, your second, abra kadabra, you're girlfriend got zapped and you are a displeasing pedophile. Did I leave anything out?"

  


Lex was stammering and bolt upright, too shocked to protest what was presented. He had never been spoken to like this. It grated him like soft cheese, spilling his contents into irretrievable masses.

  


As Lyta rummaged through her bag, the pungent smell of citrus returned to season the tension in the room. 

  


Lex crinkled his nose. "I..." he began, almost afraid to speak to her now... but he simply coated his voice in mockery and continued, "I haven't picked up this month's Cosmopolitan (or whatever might be a popular female magazine in NZ), but I'm guessing that lemon is the new Channel?" 

  


Lyta laughed as she pulled a glistening yellow orb from the bag she had just tucked the flask back into, and juggled it in one hand. She spoke over one shoulder, "One of the more primordial forms of contraception. When cut in half, that is. I have to say that I'd rather have an acidic dome being repeatedly shoved further against my fallopian tubes than coincidentally falling out of a tree."

  


Lex chuckled with regained comfort. She may be a bitch, but she was a funny bitch. This made him uncontrollably horny.

  


"Eh, kind like its own little Pantheon," and he pointed downward.

  


She gave out a wicked laugh, and latched the purse.

  


Lex was enjoying her wit. It was refreshing, if not a bit brash. She made him feel clever... whatever he thought that meant.

  


As Lyta began pacing about the room, she seemed aloof and detached. It was her normal state of expression. She didn't survive as she was without her own Great Wall. But she was concentrating deeply now on keeping a certain few blocks from slipping out of place.

  


She looked upon the bureau, and began fiddling. She unfolded a bit of felt. Inside was a large chandelier crystal, stemmed by a strand of beads. She gazed at it disenchantedly.

  


"It's pretty," she said with indifferent approval. Lex's face grew older. "Didn't think a Spartan like yourself would like anything like this..." Lyta's voice drained as she glanced at his shrunken body. She then walked over to where he still sat on the bed, and lifted his chin with one thin, clawed finger. 

  


A woman's crystal, it was, she though. She quirked her eyebrows, balancing them invitingly as she guided his eyes with hers to the glass, which she now held up to the window. He squinted at it's brilliance, before being lead to the opposite wall. A small rainbow flitted near the floor, and Lex felt a smile reemerge from the fathoms of his memories.

  


Lyta looked at him with stern softness. "Love is simplistic in its complexity, as so many facets of crafted, welted and melted sand makes something as elementary as a rainbow."

  


Lex turned to her face. The tangents of light illuminating her painted features light a stage illuminates a dancer... fluorescent lights illuminating a corpse . He leaned in to kiss, and felt her shoulder on his lips as she stood up again.

  


He had the sensation of being apart from his body as he watched her move. She was graceful, not like Tai-San, though, not like a ballerina or an angel. Like air. And her face, her mask so securely fastened to her face, so expertly decorated, iced and dried, it frothed up inside his mind the opposite of what it would intend to: intrigue.

  


She placed the crystal back in it's cape, and he sighed, "How much do I owe you?"

  


"Actually, nothing. I get paid to screw not to play psychotherapist." She was pulling on her sleeveless, floor-length coat. 

  


"Won't Jen be angry?"

  


"I'll tell him I spontaneously began menstruating." She giggled. 

  


But with his best puppy-dog face: "At least stay for breakfast..." 


	4. Scrambled Eggs

Lyta followed Lex to the Café, where sat Ellie, Jack, Trudy, and Amber at a table, with Baby Bray fumbling on Amber's knee, and Salene and May at another table. Sammy and Gel were no where to be seen, and Lex inhaled confidently at this.

  


Amber and Ellie, and Trudy as well, look suspiciously at Lex, then moreso at his glamourous guest. May's face slowly fades to that of misplaced recognition while Salene continues to pick at her food.

  


"Well, Lex, you were out late last night," Trudy began. "At least you found someone to walk you home..." She eyed Lyta with a snicker. Lex realized that even if she was the Virgin Mary, Lyta would be looked at as a tramp... most likely by association.

  


He guided her swiftly to the kitchen, and then back around to an outside table, barely setting down their bowls before hearing Ellie's voice carry towards them like dense needles:

  


"I think it'd be best if your friend left, Lex. We barely have enough food for the day." Ellie spoke with what seemed to be shame of herself more than of Lyta... as if pushed by some moral cloud that seeped from the imaginary eyes of authority. Jack stared at his food, feeling the same uncomfortable pressure.

  


"We have plenty of food. I just saw it!" Lex's voice climbed to say. His dark eyes flickered darkly as he stared down.

  


"You know what Lex," Lyta rose from the table with an apple in her hand, "I'll just get going. Come by the Casino later and we'll chat, or something." She gave a fixed smile, chiseled skillfully onto her increasingly nervous face.

  


Then May rose, having been bashful to approach before, but now was certain in saying, "I know you!" She twirled around the table and her tailwind drew Salene's face, and the other's to follow.

  


"You're one of the girls at the Casino! You showed me around when I almost had to..." May trailed off cautiously... her neck screwed around to stare pitifully at the shocked faces of the fellow Mallrats, and with eyes kissing the floor she returned to her seat.

  


Lyta did remember May, but she barely smiled in response to her. The tension in the room was pressing the corners of her smeared mouth shut. She turned again to walk out the mall, looking back once to see one more face staring at her, frozen with surprise.

  


She was gone.

  


"I can't believe you arses just threw her out like that. And you! Supreme Mother! I'm sure much more than a draft got up your robes back then!"

  


Trudy's face became of a flurry of reds and blues, but Jay finally stopped staring at Lyta's belated shadow.

  


"Who..." he stammered with great consideration. "Who brought her here?" He demanded finally, feeling the staples of eyeballs slice his skin. "Who!" He cried.

  


Amber finally spoke up, having kept locked for the entirety of these broken conversations, "Do you know her, Jay? You just came in how did you know..."

  


"Lex!" Jay interrupted quickly. "Was it you?" 

  


Lex stood slowly, "Yeah, it was me. What are you all gonna do about it?"

  


And the onomatopoeia that followed crackled like a blood explosion.

  


"What the Hell were you thinking bringing her here? What did you tell her?" Jay further pressed Lex's body to the wall as Amber tried to pry his viced fingers from the accused's throat.

  


"I... just... was..." Lex attempted dryly.

  


"Jay let go of him!" Everyone was standing now.

  


Both Jack and Amber were able to disengage Jay's body from Lex's weight. Jay stared thorns into Lex's chest as they both caught their breaths.

  


"Are you so stupid?" Jay said venomously. "What did you tell her, huh? Where I was hiding so that those loyal to the Technos can come stake me!"

  


"What the fuck are you talking about!?" 

  


"Jay," Amber said, confusedly, "What are you on about?"

  


"She's a bloody spy! One of Jen's little snitch whores."

  


"What?" Jack chimed.

  


"In return for freedom to operate without Techno control, Ram requested the... services... of Jen's women."

  


Trudy's face flushed with shock, but Amber's skipped strait to rage.

  


"... I never had any of it, but you know how Ram upheld pleasure as the second greatest sensation possible!"

  


"So how's that make her a spy?" asked Jack.

  


"They reported back to Jen everything said to them in these pay offs, and let me tell you they weren't put to the designs of Rebellion."

  


Lex began to move towards the exit immediately.

  


"Lex where are you going," Amber began, exhaustedly.

  


"I'm not letting her worm her way around here and get away with it!" He stormed out.

  


Jack looked around, befuddled. "Not that there's anything to really spy on here..." Amber tweaked her eyebrows while Salene shook her head.


	5. Chandelier Secrets

Notes: Thank you (all three of you) for your wonderful reviews! It's great motivation to read your opinions and thoughts. 

  


And Zoe, I smiled for about three days strait because of your review. You're so super cool. 

  


* * *

  
  


The Casino smelled of stale flesh and beer, candy-liquor and bruises. Lex felt dizzy off the low-hanging condensation of painful pleasures. 

  


His gelatinous sight finally wrapped itself around the shape of what looked like Lyta, but at a closer glance was a different worker.

  


"She's around back, but I she's not with a client right now... you know you're gonna have to pay extra for barging in on her break..."

  


"Why don't you just bring her out here, eh?" Lex sieved from his teeth with difficulty. 

  


This woman, this... girl... He hadn't felt so violated since long before the Virus. His heart made patterns with its betrayal, and his hands made the simpler forms of fists as he watched her walk around a back curtain.

  


To think he had let her into his home.

  


But Lyta's chocolate smile hadn't melted, and it bubbled like acid in his throat to loose his will at the sight of it.

  


"... And I didn't even take off my top," She said to his return, a smirk cutting her face.

  


"Jen, you, and the Technos... tell me about it," He watched her eyes milk over, and her face became ancient at the mention of it. Lex could feel his chest being pushed inwards by her nervousness.

  


Her composure toppled like a shifting scale, finally finding its equilibrium. Once achieved it was impeccably placed. "I have no cue what you're talking about."

  


"Yeah, I think you do. What exactly are you girls looking for now that Mega's gone, eh? Maybe the Mallrats are next..."

  


"Lex, How _do_ you stay on your feet with your head as large as it is?"

  


Lex sucked on his teeth to control his hands, "I dunno, maybe I'll try setting my legs apart a bit farther, like you."

  


Her face sank for all of the world's weight. "I don't know anything about the Techno's or the Mallrats, alright? I don't know!" 

  


"Yes you do! You're a spy!" Lex said all too loudly. Lyta's pale pale cheeks began to bleed.

  


"So what if I am... what do I spy on? The size of the local sovereign Tribe's..."

  


"Look, I'm not joking around. Did you go home with my last night for info or not? Recording what I said in my sleep... like that movie... 1989 or something."

  


"Like I said..." Lyta's teeth clenched to say, her blush cherrying to a flush, "You have no clue what you're talking about..."

  


"I think you do and I think I do... and maybe the rest of the room does!"

  


It became quiet, heads turned like the white-flushed heads of owls to stare at the two. Lyta's face convoluted into electric embarrassment and rage. Lex felt like he'd cornered her now... an entire room of alcohol infused agitation would do the trick of truth, he was sure of it.

  


But instead he felt the grip of her surprisingly strong hand (for her frail arrangement) on his upper arm, dragging him trippingly to the other side of the Casino and into a small bedroom towards the back.

  


Lyta slammed and locked the door behind them.

  


Lex took a look around the room. It had brown walls and a white ceiling, and a mattress at one corner, draped in scarves and softly torn silks, a make-shift canopy lulling it to sleep. The walls were covered in old broken-framed charcoal drawings of nude women and melancholy faces, and onto protruding, splintering screws were strapped broken masks of chalk-skin and tulips. Some of them were poorly glued back together, others sanded down. Some had their detached lovers still laying on the floor, still resembling in shape what the rest of the mask was without. There was a chandelier, also partially destroyed, from which sewing thread held old scratched CDs. Old vinyls lay about a fumbling record player.

  


It was her bedroom... her own bedroom. Lex didn't even think they had them.

  


Lyta had taken some time to ice her temper, to gather her words into something politically correct, at least.

  


"Are you completely insane Lex?" ... Well, she tried.

  


"Well, I just want an answer."

  


She was quiet for a bit, staring boldly into Lex's eyes. Her irises were like looking into the leaves of trees, like photosynthesis. They were the colored pencil detail in her charcoal body.

  


She was finally able to hold her voice again, "What does it matter to you? Why so upset? Like you've ever been any holier..." She broke off, but Lex waited for her to finished.

  


"Yeah, so Jen suggested all too clearly that we were not to forget anything said to us that might be... integral to the Techno regime. Alright, Lex? I admit it. I was the top slut for that job for Chrissakes." She let breath fill her faint a few times. "But you can't stand there and tell _me_ that what I did was wrong. Do you understand now that I _know_ you dealt with the Technos, just as shadily. I _know_."

  


"Well at least I tried to put them out! At least I didn't leave my information to some idiot who'd get us all killed with it," Lex finally said.

  


"You're right. That Gladiator bit was just genius."

  


"... Look I did all I could–"

  


"And I didn't, right!? Jesus Lex, do you think I like this? Do you think I'm happy? I'm a fuck and a freak... I've been doubly exploited..." Lyta felt her stomach slide outside of her torso. "I can't forget... I can't forget anything. It's a disorder... absence of subconscious or something." She shook her head. "I don't know. Everything, every word I've read every... conversation I've had I... remember... That's why Jen put me up to the Technos... There were only four of us who did it... But I could remember everything in the room without being suspected, remember the smallest details." She looked up, her eyes like arrows, cutting fabric and flesh to reach the core they crave.

  


Lex was not shocked, it was more like fumbled. He felt out of place, out of bounds and deep inside, he felt hurt. He felt piteous... then envious... and then felt guilty for it. When the torrent had subsided, he lifted his eyes back to hers. Falling deep inside them, crawling and chipping and scraping through their chasms. Falling into them. Falling...

  


"The Chosen wanted me first, the Locusts before that. They took my brother but I got away... thanks to Jen. I went to school with Mart... Zoot... they thought Kai had the same "gifts". I think he's dead now." She looked like a pile of ashes. Sad and dry and destroyed. "I had no idea who Jen was, but as it turned out I walked into what I was running from."

  


"Oh... I'm sorry"

  


She was sinking down into a corner, skinny and scared and clammy. Lex walked over and knelt down beside her.

  


"So you knew Martin, and Trudy and Bray?"

  


Lyta sighed humidly. "I barely payed attention to Martin in High School. Jaffa payed more attention to me than I to him – I've never had a man work so hard to win my affection in my life... though that's not hard to believe now. Bray was mister popular, never spoke to me one word. Trudy... She's a Mallrat now... I recognized her voice... Strange girl..."

  


Lex was confused. "Why didn't you say anything to her? Weren't you friend with her?"

  


"I haven't survived on blurting out every memory I have, Lex. 

  


"And I didn't have any friends. I was too 'creepy'."

  


Lex nodded in understanding. This was becoming very complicated. But if he thought it was complicated, then she must have stones in her head from these webs woven. He began to have some conception of why she never slept at night...

  


She was speaking again, shakily.

  


"I knew who you were... but I approached you for me... my sake... You're face, it's a plate made of secrets and served with secrets, garnished with them... secrets you would never tell. Silent sex. I just wanted something peaceful. Even though I didn't get it, I'm glad I did it. I don't care if you hate me... everyone hates me."

  


"I don't hate you," was all he said. He placed his hand on hers... she was freezing, cold as crystal. She seemed flat, two-dimensional, like a drawing. One of Lautrec's Parisian whores. Yet as the shadows hugged her, like a child to a mother's breast, Lex felt his chest tighten, his joints buckle and grind.

  


"You wanna know what Jen did with the information?"

  


Lex nodded dumbly.

  


"He was going to sell it to whoever would pay the most... but he ended up waiting too long, and by the time he tried, you lot had already defeated Ram. His secrets were for free."

  


Lex felt laughter cook in his throat. He began to exhale, and found himself thundering with it. Lyta, too. His head fell into her lap as his laughter contorted his balance. He couldn't tell you how long he rested there.

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
